Managing Design Processes Discussion

he rapid contextual design method (RCDM) involves the  following steps:

1. Contextual inquiry. Plan for, prepare, and then conduct field  interviews to observe and understand the work tasks being performed.  Review business practices.

2. Interpretation sessions and work modeling. Hold team  discussions to draw conclusions based on the contextual inquiry,  including gaining an understanding of the workflow processes in the  organization as well as cultural and policy impacts on work performed.  Capture key points (affinity notes).

3. Model consolidation and affinity diagram building. Present the  data gathered to date from users and the interpretation and work  modeling to a larger, targeted population to gain insight and  concurrence. Consolidate the work models to illustrate common work  patterns and processes and create affinity diagrams (hierarchical  representations of the issues to address user needs).

4. Persona development. Develop personas (fictitious characters)  to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that  might use a site or product (Cooper, 2004). This aids the team in  communicating the needs of the users and bringing those user needs to  fruition. Examples of personas, at a high level, are: 1) 22-year-old  male with 5 years of video game playing experience, or 2) 70-year-old  female using computer only for e-mail and digital photo sharing.

5. Visioning. Review and “walk” the consolidated data, sharing  the personas created. The visioning session helps define how the system  will streamline and transform the work of the users. Capture key issues  and ideas using flipcharts or any media that will facilitate expressing  the vision of the revised business processes.

6. Storyboarding. The vision guides the detailed redesign of user  tasks using pictures and graphs to describe the initial user-interface  concepts, business rules, and automation assumptions. Storyboarding  defines and illustrates the “to be built” assumptions.

7. User environment design. The single, coherent representation  of the users and the work to be performed is expressed in the user  environment design (UED). The UED is built from the storyboards.

8. Interviews and evaluations with paper prototypes and mock-ups.  Conduct interviews and tests with actual users, beginning with paper  prototypes and then moving on to higher-fidelity prototypes.  Capturing  the results of the interviews aids in ensuring that the systems will  meet end-user requirements.

Select any 3 of the above steps of the  Rapid Contextual Design Method (RCDM) and describe how each step would  be carried out for the SPECIFIC HCI Project Deliverable that you are  developing for this course.  Be Specific.  Do not re-define the step,  but EXPLAIN what you would do in order to carry out that specific step  for YOUR HCI Project for this course.